


War Drums

by Aloof_Introvert



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Pronouns, Sort of shippy, but mostly platonic - Freeform, idk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 16:51:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5709862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aloof_Introvert/pseuds/Aloof_Introvert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A little story I wrote quite a while ago... Also, in Part 2, Koschei quotes Moriarty from BBC's Sherlock.<br/>: )</p>
    </blockquote>





	War Drums

**Author's Note:**

> A little story I wrote quite a while ago... Also, in Part 2, Koschei quotes Moriarty from BBC's Sherlock.  
> : )

**Part 1**

     Koschei didn't like the TARDIS's desktop. Coral. They thought the forked pillars yawning out of the floor and tangling at the ceiling looked stupid and silly. At least it fits a stupid-looking Time Lord, they thought as they paced. They didn't like the metal grate flooring because it clicked and clanged every time their boots landed on it. The lights were colorful and gaudy, too bright for a headache this bad. And the TARDIS wouldn't turn them down when they asked. A silly Time Lord in a faulty time machine. Books had been written about less.

     One-two-three-four. It beat against Koschei's brain. One-two-three-four.

Koschei hadn't realized anyone was coming until they caught a stupid, silly-looking man in their peripheral vision.

     "Oh," ey chirped, all skinny pinstripe suit and spiked-up hair, "I didn't realize you were here. I was just going to do some repairs." The Doctor held up a little metal toolbox. Ey's lying, of course, thought Koschei with a scowl. Ey sensed me here. Probably came because ey felt me getting angry. Em with eir perfectly-working psychic faculties... For a second, Koschei caught themself being jealous.

     "Fix the lights, will you? They're horrible," said Koschei, scornfully. Pacing and clicking the ugly metal floor. "And put on some music."

     "Why, what's wrong with the lights?" the Doctor asked, reaching for the monitor.

     "They won't dim," Koschei grunted, a hand going to their head. They found it in them to think of a jab. "And blue and orange lights? Really?" The Doctor ignored them and chose a song at random. Florence + the Machine's "Drumming Song" ricocheted through the console room. Ey raised eir eyebrows at Koschei inscrutably, but Koschei wouldn't budge. The Doctor chose a tune that was supposedly Ian Dury and the Blockheads, and the action merely made Koschei's song of choice even louder.

    _"There's a drumming noise inside my head, and it starts when you're around."_

The Doctor sighed shortly as ey put on eir glasses, still in the process of getting used to Koschei's petty annoyances. "You hacked the sound system?"

     "Yes. You're welcome." But Koschei didn't sound as pleased with themself as they usually did. Their fingers, resting on the console, began to tap. One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four. The Doctor watched their fingers but said nothing. Instead, ey turned eir attention to eir new music library, which consisted entirely of "Drumming Song" and the occasional "I Can't Decide". Koschei knew it'd take em at least an hour to get through all the defenses they put up, hopefully more. They were always better at this sort of thing than the Doctor; they didn't need a fancy noisy screwdriver to help them waltz into a database. One-two-three-four, their head pounded out.

     One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four.

     "Blimey, how many firewalls did you put up?" the Doctor muttered after a second. There was no answer, so ey repeated emself, struggling to be heard over Florence and the mechanical drumming. "Master? How many firewalls did you put up?" But Koschei was holding their head in both hands, fingers pressing into their scruffy ash blonde hair, unable even to focus on the flare of triumph that came when the Doctor used their title. Koschei sunk down against the ridiculous wrestling-style guide rails and curled into the dark fabric of their sweatshirt. It was one of those days when they couldn't cope with it, the constant, alarm clock _banging_ in their head. The Doctor watched, face carefully impassive. "I could help you, you know," ey said, for that was eir job as the doctor. The man who makes people better. One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four.

     "One-two-three-four," finished the Master, wincing, hitting their head against the steel railing for emphasis at each beat, or maybe just for a distraction. "Louder than ever before." They opened their eyes and the Doctor was crouched in front of them, glasses stowed away in eir Mary Poppins pockets.

    _"They left a ringing in my ears. But that drum's still beating loud and clear."_

     "I can help you," repeated the Doctor, deliberately.

     "No, not today, I want to keep them." The Doctor narrowed eir eyes in confusion.

     "Why would you want to do that?"

     "Because I can't remember a time before them. Who was I?" Koschei demanded, internally irritated by their current regeneration's persistence in reminiscing.

     "I remember," the Doctor said simply.

     "Stuff your memory," growled Koschei, sullen. With that, the Doctor rose and left them alone in the console room.

It wasn't long before ey was back, attempting to balance a cup of tea on a saucer and walk at eir normal speed simultaneously. Koschei would have laughed if they saw em lurching along, but it hurt to raise their head. The saucer was placed on the ground; it held a steaming cup of tea, a few custard creams, and four tablets of ibuprofen. Beside it, Koschei's hand tapped their eternal rhythm on the floor of the TARDIS. The Doctor merely watched it for a moment, then crouched to Koschei's level, took their hand and pressed the cup into it. Ey rose, retrieved eir toolbox, and went below the console room to find something to fix.

     When ey looked up a handful or so minutes later, Koschei was nowhere to be seen and the tea and saucer were left behind on the floor. The Doctor listened to the squeak of Koschei's boots fading down one of many hallways in the TARDIS's labyrinth.

     And in the end ey couldn't resist. The Doctor climbed the stairs back up to the main control room and checked the teacup and saucer. They were both empty.

 

* * *

 

**Part 2**

     Ten didn't like nighttime. Especially when it was sleepless. Eir shadow mimicked em on the wall of the corridor while ey paced the same three feet of floor again... and again, and again. It was 3:16 in the morning, eir sense of time told em, and ey thanked it caustically, as though it was the reason ey couldn't sleep. And it was such an astonishingly simple task, too. Just relax and close your eyes. Well, it didn't help if you just kept waking up every few minutes. That was probably the issue.

     No more. It circled Ten's brain. And every fire and the acid rain.

Ten hadn't realized anyone was coming until ey caught a daft, disheveled-looking person in eir peripheral vision.

     "It's 3:17 in the morning, what are you doing pacing around like a ghost?" the Master sneered, stepping into the dim glow offered by the wall lights. With their black hoodie and pale hair, Ten thought the Master looked sort of like a ghoul themself.

     "I was on my way to the kitchen. I left the lights on," Ten lied. Ey worked to sound more alert than ey felt.

     "Oh, that's very clever, ooh, that's awfully clever. Well put," the Master remarked, arms crossed. Ten sighed, really more of a huff. Ey should have at least kept eir pajamas on; a suit and converse didn't exactly say bedtime.

     "How did you even know I was here?"

     "I heard you. Didn't you know my room is right over there?" They pointed to a room several yards down the hall.

     "No, in fact, I didn't," said Ten, a bit more irritably than ey would have liked. There was a silence; the TARDIS filled it with the soft thrum of engines and the low buzzing of lights mounted on the slanted walls. Ten decided that ey'd distract the Master by asking them to turn off the lights in the kitchen. Ey knew that giving the Master an order would kindle an argument, one that ey'd pretend to lose. Then ey'd start towards the kitchen, hanging eir head, and detour to the library or something.

     "Tell me about the War," said the Master.

If Ten had opened eir mouth to speak, it was shut now.

     "Oh, don't look at me like that," scoffed the Master, gesturing to whatever face Ten was making; ey wasn't completely sure. "It was my planet too. I have just as much claim to its history as you do." Ten remembered how to talk.

     "Why should I tell you that?" Ten asked, unable to keep the apprehension from eir voice.

     "Because knowing you, you haven't talked to anyone about it yet. Besides, none of your humans will relate. I've already forgiven you for taking out the Time Lords, so why not tell me about the last couple of days?" There was a silence. Ten took a deep breath and leaned against the wall, arms crossed over eir chest like armor.

     "There was the Horde of Travesties. They were creatures, like animals and drudges, except they were sort of... caricatures of them," ey explained, striving to distance emself from what ey was saying. "They had poison teeth and bulging eyes. Hideous... Hideous gashes of mouths. Like when you lay awake at night thinking of faces that scared you as a kid, but they moved. And tried to kill you. They couldn't be stopped. I fought them on the front li--"

     "Couldn't you just shoot them?" the Master suggested. Ten kept eir eyes on the floor.

     "No. They could morph their bodies to dodge the shots."

     "Then you should've used a spray of bullets so they couldn't run away fast enough." That was when Ten looked at them, glared into their face, detected the hint of smugness in it. That couldn't work. It didn't. But it wasn't a question of strategy; it was the fact that the Master would even consider that, when the Doctor killed the Time Lords, there was another way out. That it wasn't a last resort. The Master met Ten's gaze and held it. They had the audacity to shrug, which only repelled Ten more.

     "I'm just saying," said the Master. Ten almost didn't want to continue, but the words tumbled out before ey could stop them.

     "Then there was the Nightmare Child. A massive being; there was a black hole, festering, in its head. You could only really see its torso in silhouette. Half of it was muscle and the other half was bone. It--" Ten squeezed eir eyes shut. "The thing wasn't even fully formed. It was made of such pure hatred, I felt bad for it sometimes. But we had to kill it. Of course we did. We had to. Maybe if it had a little empathy, or someone taught it to--"

     "That reminds me," the Master cut in, "whatever happened to Animimotis?" Ten recalled blonde hair and green eyes, xyr crimson robes from the House of Redlooms. Ey didn't like to think about xyr.

     "Xe was on Gallifrey on the last day." Ey hoped ey didn't need to say more.

     "Oh," said the Master, eyebrows raised in understanding. Their mouth gave a peculiar twist that Ten thought might've been the start of a grin. "So you..." The rest of the sentence hung in the air. Both of them heard it.

     And all of a sudden Ten's face was inches from the Master's, contorted in rage. Ey pointed eir finger in their face, muscles taut and furious.

 _"That is it._ That is _ENOUGH--"_ Ten realized ey was shouting and caught emself. "--from you." Ey straightened, pulling away from the startled Master. "I'm going to sleep. Don't bother me." Ten turned on eir heel and stalked away down the darkened corridor, every step bringing em farther away from the stranger in the hallway.

     Ey ended up in the TARDIS library trying to read a magazine. The glossy pages reflected the soft orange glow of the chandelier. Warmth pervaded the cozy part of the library ey'd claimed as eir own, a little compact corner that made the rest of the library not seem so ridiculously big. The armchair was plush and the room was silent. All of it would have put em to sleep in record time if eir head wasn't spinning. Ey tried not to think about facing the Travesties or killing the Child or Animimotis. The article ey was reading lauded the discoveries of the Mars Rover, which was always good for a quick laugh, but not on that particular night. In fact, it was the third night that week.

     When the Master put the plate down on the elegant side table, Ten jumped. So did the Master. They looked at Ten warily, as though they hadn't expected to be caught. Ten ignored them and glanced at the porcelain plate.

     "Is that an apology?"

     "No, it's eggs and toast, idiot." Typical. Ten let the comment slide and took an adventurous bite of the sunny-side up egg.

     "It's stone cold."

     "Well excuuuuse me, princess," the Master countered, and Ten could have sworn there was some defensiveness in it. Ten poked a corner of the only _slightly_ charred toast into the egg yolk. When ey took a bite, eir face twisted in disgust.

     "I think the yolk is raw..."

     "I didn't even know what a yolk _was_ until half an hour ago, you're just lucky I made that!" insisted the Master, petulantly. Ten fixed them with a patient stare. The Master refused to squirm, instead taking the magazine out of Ten's hand. "What's this, Science Today? How cute," the Master said, smirking at the cover. Ten didn't show any signs of looking away. The Master sighed, annoyed. "What I mean to say is..." The Master paused for far too long. At least Ten could be certain they weren't lying. "...Yes, it's an apology." Ten only raised eir eyebrows. Just saying sorry wasn't enough. "And I'm sorry I brought your wife into it," the Master finished after a moment.

     "Apology accepted."

     "About time," said the Master, almost as soon as the words left Ten's mouth. They walked briskly out of the room as though they had some pressing business to attend to. Ten theorized that they just didn't want em to notice they'd stolen eir magazine. Ey looked around. An "I'm sorry" wasn't going to help em sleep, but it made em feel a little bit better. Ten finished the eggs and toast, grimacing all the way. Maybe that's how this is gonna be, ey thought to emself. Grimacing all the way.


End file.
